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VICTORIA — The B.C. government will not cancel provincial tenures for 20 coastal open-pen fish farms, instead giving the industry and its thousands of jobs a four-year reprieve while the province waits for Ottawa to take the lead on the issue.

Agriculture Minister Lana Popham is expected to announce that the B.C. government will allow 20 provincial tenures for fish farms in the Broughton Archipelago to expire today, and then automatically renew them month-to-month until 2022.

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That’s when federal licences that control the location of those farms come up for renewal. The idea is that the two governments will act then together in the renewal process.

Popham will announce that, after 2022, the province will only approve renewals or new fish farm licences that meet two strict conditions: a stipulation from the federal Fisheries Department that the farm won’t endanger B.C. wild salmon and consent from local First Nations.

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B.C.’s tenures merely let a company fix its open-ocean pens to the seabed. It is Ottawa’s licences that control where a fish farm can be located in the ocean, how it can restock its fish, what science is used to determine the disease risk, and the overall potential impact on federally regulated salmon stock.

B.C.’s move will likely draw mixed reactions.

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Environmental groups, tourism operators and some First Nations have called on the NDP government to honour its promises and immediately close open-pen ocean fish farms. They worry that diseases from farmed fish could infect and kill wild salmon — though the industry argues its science proves otherwise. A four-year wait is likely to disappoint those seeking quick action to protect wild salmon.

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For the industry, which has been operating open-pen farms for more than 30 years in B.C., the reprieve could be interpreted as more of a deadline for the 6,600 direct and indirect jobs that could be lost if the industry can’t satisfy government requirements.

The NDP government has been pressuring fish farms to switch to closed land-based facilities, where there’s no risk to wild salmon. But the industry has said it’s not financially feasible. The province intends to encourage more research on land-based fish farms during the four-year transition.

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Marine Harvest Canada, which has 11 tenures that expire Wednesday, already has agreements with 15 local First Nations but still faces protests by several Aboriginal communities and representatives who several months ago occupied one of its sites in protest. On Tuesday, the Dzawada’enuxw First Nation from Kingcome Inlet filed an application asking the B.C. Supreme Court to block any renewal of provincial tenures held by Marine Harvest Canada and Cermaq Canada in their territory.

Politically, the move represents the culmination of a slow backpedal by the governing New Democrats on their promise to quickly end ocean fish farms, as well as the realization the B.C. government was legally and practically unable to simply unilaterally cancel the tenures on today’s deadline.

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Lands Minister Doug Donaldson has told the legislature that the renewal process is controlled by non-partisan statutory decision-makers in his ministry, and government can’t legally fetter renewals. And the province can legally look only at narrow issues, such as the environmental impact of the anchor on the seabed, or whether fish farm docks and maintenance are up to standards, said Donaldson.

“The replacement of tenures is not the tool to address concerns that people might have around the impact of fish farms on wild salmon,” Donaldson said during debate on his ministry estimates in March.

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Donaldson has said Ottawa has “90 per cent” of the responsibility for fish farms, stemming from a 2009 court case in which environmental advocates won a ruling that transferred authority to the federal government. The environmental groups wanted to remove control of fish farms from the then B.C. Liberal government, but the ruling has also left few tools available to the NDP.

Persuading Ottawa to become more involved in B.C. fish farms is not an insignificant hurdle for the B.C. government. Premier John Horgan’s chief of staff, Geoff Meggs, and his special adviser, Don Bain, travelled to Ottawa last week to meet with senior officials from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to try to gather support for their plan.

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